White Eye

by Blanche d'Alpuget

  Margaret, the receptionist, greeted Diana with exaggerated friendliness. “Love the new feather,” she said, staring up at Diana’s hat.

  “Black cockatoo.”

  “Love it,” Margaret repeated with an envious smile. She stood up but sat down again suddenly, grabbing the side of her desk. “Heavy night,” she murmured.

  Inside the consulting room, Jason was on the telephone.

  “Have you heard?” he asked after he rang off. “That nympho from the Research was drinking with some men in the Kalunga Arms on Saturday night. She left with a couple of them. She’s been found strangled down by the lake.”

  “Who were the men?” Diana asked.

  “Out-of-towners. Probably duck shooters.” He tried to look grave, but his face suddenly lit up with glee. “Murdered! Makes you realize, doesn’t it?”

  “Realize what?” she asked. Two X rays of the broken wing were clamped on his light box.

  “The times we live in—everything out of control.” His eyes flashed with a flea market of cheap ideas: The Total Breakdown of Society, The End of Life on Earth, The Destruction of the Planet. “Africa’s had it. So has South America. The United States is falling to pieces. But I reckon you and I will be all right, out here in the bush. It’s the cities that will be destroyed. And city people.”

  Diana went to the light box.

  “It’s a clean break,” she murmured. “Let’s go and see her.”

  When they opened the laundry door, the eagle flared her mane until her hackles stood erect, and she glared at her visitors from beneath jutting brows. Then she did something very few animals can do: she stared defiantly into human eyes.

  Diana had the extraordinary experience of knowing that those sherry-colored lamps were seeing right through her own pupils, to the retinas at the back of her eyes. She withdrew a step and observed the bird carefully. The eagle was, as she had guessed yesterday, almost a meter tall, and her wings fully extended would approach three meters. Her wide-spaced legs were two black pillars beneath her heavy body. Apart from a retrice that had broken during capture, which Diana knew she could imp, the feathers were undamaged, glossy and dark. No lice, she thought. A dull-feathered bird could turn white overnight from thousands of hatched mallophaga. The eagle’s trousers were thick and fluffy, the feet looked sound, and each toe ended in a perfect small blue dagger. The beak was unblemished, and there was not too great an overhang—the sign of plenty of bones in her diet. The bird was at least twenty, maybe thirty years old. She could live to forty-five in the right conditions.

  Diana looked at the feet again to convince herself they were sound. Flying at eighty kilometers an hour, the eagle would strike with two tons of pressure in her feet. Prey heard for a moment the whoomp! whoomp! of majestic wings, then a blow smashed out of the air.

  The eagle had been preening—another good sign, for it meant that although she was captive and helpless, her spirit was strong. Diana had never seen such a dark bird, or such a glossy one. She felt suddenly that the black feathers had turned into a reflecting surface, like the lid of a black piano, and as one can sometimes see one’s face wavering in a piano lid, she caught a glimpse of herself in the glossy plumage.

  Jason was standing close behind her.

  “Is the wing too badly broken to be pinned?” she asked.

  “No. You saw that it’s only the ulna. But …”

  “I’ll train her to fly.”

  He gave a loud sigh. “Sheer madness. What’s more, I was hoping to be able to use my laundry again to wash clothes.”

  “It’ll be only a couple of days, then I’ll take her home.”

  “Okay, okay. Let’s get scrubbed up, then, shall we?” Jason was fanatical about correct preparation for surgery, but if the operation to be done was just a matter of cutting out lead shot or a bit of wire or glass, he often invited Diana to make the incisions and put in the sutures. Pinning bones he did himself, while she stood to his left, acting as surgical nurse. When he was writing he looked clumsy, but with a scalpel in his left hand, he was an artist.

  His incision was so skillful, there was almost no blood. When she congratulated him, he reddened with pleasure. Suddenly he turned to her. “Come on, you do the pin.”

  He was holding the edges of the broken bones together, ready for the metal pin to be inserted. It slid in easily, extending a couple of centimeters beyond the feathers. There would be a horrible moment three weeks hence when the bone had healed and they had to remove the pin. Meanwhile, it was essential to have the wings positioned exactly, or the eagle would never fly again. Diana trembled with nervous tension as she secured the leather thongs.

  She and Jason stood side by side at the stainless-steel trough, washing their hands. “How about dinner tonight?” he asked. He was scrubbing his nails with small, fierce movements.

  “A drink,” she said. “I’m too tired for a late night.”

  “A late night.” He sighed. “Long time since I’ve had one of those. A drink, then. Do you still have that gorgeous black dress that slides off your shoulders?”

  She flushed. Raoul had taken photographs of her in that dress, and she had kept one, framed, in her bedroom. Jason had seen it once when he followed her into her room while she was fetching an umbrella for him.

  The previous night, after speaking to her husband, Sonja had tried to contact her sister. She knew that if Hilary first learned of the murder from newspaper reports, she would be furious and would look for a scapegoat, preferably someone at the Research. She could imagine her sister’s white, meaty hand reaching for a telephone, the impressive bosom heaving. She’ll accuse me of deliberately keeping her in the dark, Sonja thought.

  Her sister regarded Sonja as an embarrassment. With parents medical and legal and their brother one of the state’s highest paid QCs, Sonja was a letdown to Olfson family glamour. “Why are you buried out there in the bush in that fifty-million-dollar white elephant?” Hilary asked sometimes. “Get a job in Sydney! There are plenty of biotech companies where John could find work.” Hilary herself was always dashing to conferences or drafting legislation in the early hours of the morning. In between, she had lunch with Nobel Prize winners.

  Sonja knew her sister did not think much of John either, although she was coquettish in a heavy sort of way when she met him at social gatherings. She liked to introduce him as “My brilliant brother-in-law—you should ask him about gene shears.” But the first time she saw him, she’d said to Sonja, “He’s a bit gloomy isn’t he? And two wives already.” Her eye appraised his old corduroy trousers and the tweed jacket with patches on the elbows. For a terrible moment, Sonja thought Hilary would say what she was thinking. But suddenly Senator Olfson flashed her politician’s grin of triumph. “Well—he’s got lots of possibilities,” she said, as if she were a real estate agent and John a derelict house she wanted to off-load.

  “She despises us,” Sonja complained to John.

  “She’s vain and stupid,” he replied.

  “She would like to close down the Research.”

  He snorted. “Her bureaucrats won’t let her. The government has squandered a fortune on this place in the past ten years, so it can’t stop now. We’re safe for another decade.”

  Sonja’s phone call on Sunday evening was answered by her sister’s voice on a machine. She left a message saying, “Something important to tell you—ring me back as late as you like.” That will make her sit up, Sonja thought. Hilary had once remarked, “I know you’re always tucked into bed with a mug of Ovaltine by nine o’clock.”

  Sonja decided to soothe her nerves by doing some work on the plywood wastepaper basket she was decorating. She put a Mozart concerto on the CD machine, cleared a space on the dining table, and laid out her tools. Then she examined her piece. She had sandpapered it already and sealed it with six coats of gesso, until her basket felt as smooth as porcelain. All she had had to do then was paint on two coats of sealer and allow them to dry. Now she could begin applying the decorat
ive motif she had chosen. It was a scattering of bows she had seen on some gift wrap. She laid out the paper bows on greaseproof paper, ready to glue on. She rubbed glue onto the back of the first one, pressed it against the side of the basket—and disaster! the bow crinkled. As she tried to pat it straight with a sponge, it tore. She plucked it off with gritted teeth.

  Her hands were shaking.

  I’ve got an infection! she thought. Her hands never shook. John once remarked, “You could do brain surgery with those hands.” She went to the bathroom mirror to examine herself: her nose looked pointy, the way it did when she was upset, and she was as pale as chalk. Under the fluorescent glare, her hair had turned an insipid shade of orange. I’m starving hungry, she thought. For a moment she struggled against thoughts of the coconut fudge in the biscuit tin in the fridge.

  In the kitchen, still shaking, she crammed the coconut fudge into her mouth. The sugar was piercing, but after a moment the fierce sweetness vanished and she felt much better.

  The phone woke her at 1:00 A.M.

  “Mus’ be important if you wan’ me t’ ring you anytime. Doan tell me you’re freggo—I mean preggo!” Hilary chortled. She was in a cheerful mood, but that changed quickly.

  “Duck shooters?” she said. “They think it’s duck shooters who murdered her? Fuck! I okay the ducking fuck-shooting licenses.”

  Sonja, still trembling from the shock of smashed sleep, said, “I’m sorry, Hilary. I didn’t know that.”

  “Of course you did. The attorney general gets advice from the minister for the environment about what fauna to shoot. Thanks anyway.” She rang off.

  On Monday morning, Senator Olfson put her staff straight onto the case.

  The early-morning ABC radio news bulletins and many of the commercial stations reported the murder of a female scientist on the weekend. Some described the victim as “considered brilliant by her colleagues”; one added “and popular.” Most claimed that Dr. Williams’s body had been discovered on the Research itself.

  Hilary telephoned the director of security, Joe Miller.

  When she discovered that the corpse had not been found on government land at all, she issued a ministerial press release, which thundered at “irresponsible reporting.” By 10:00 A.M., the nation’s most popular current affairs/entertainment television show had invited the minister for science, technology, and the environment to appear on its lunchtime segment. The show’s producer promised Hilary’s principal private secretary that the murder would be merely a peg. On it the minister could hang a discussion of the work being done under her aegis to eliminate feral pests. “We’ll show footage of the 1950s rabbit plague,” the producer said.

  “As long as they ask no questions about duck-shooting licenses,” Hilary cautioned. Her private secretary rang the producer back.

  “The minister cannot touch on anything to do with duck shooting, because in this murder case it may well be sub judice.”

  The producer laughed sarcastically. “There will be Greens in the audience. I can’t guarantee what they’ll ask.”

  “Lying bastards!” Hilary shouted when she heard this. “They’ve primed the Greens to ask me about duck shooting.” Her office moved from Damage Control to Crisis mode.

  “I’ll make an environmental statement,” the minister announced. Balefully, her gaze rested one by one on the faces of her staff. None of them could immediately think of anything she might announce one hour from now that would divert the attention of environmentalists from the recreational slaughter of waterfowl. Hilary pressed a large white hand to her brow. “Lucky I’m here to think of solutions.” She knew she was a martyr to public duty and not really appreciated. “I’ll foreshadow legislation to reform the ethics committees,” she announced. “From now on, there will be two animal welfare representatives on every committee in scientific institutions where animals are used.”

  “Brilliant, boss,” said her PPS.

  Hilary told him to get her the file on the Ethics Committee at the Research, then to get Sonja on the telephone. While he was engaged on the second chore, she flicked through the file, her big face creasing with annoyance. “Did I sign this?” she called out.

  The PPS returned to her office.

  “This letter to Dr. Parker, appointing him as animal welfare representative on the Ethics Committee at the Research … Did I sign this?”

  He wore a hangdog look.

  “Why did you let me do that? Parker is my brother-in-law!”

  “That was 1990, Minister. He wasn’t your brother-in-law then.”

  She grunted. “But he works in the organization. The ethics committees are meant to have people from outside to review their use of animals. He shouldn’t have been appointed—even if it was before my neurotic sister married him.”

  The principal private secretary stood behind her and read the letter quickly. He had written it. He knew the appointment had seemed all right at the time. “Oh, but look, boss. Dr. Parker is an outsider. He’s freelance. He’s got a lab there, but he’s got nothing to do with the rabbit and fox fertility-control program—and that’s where they’re using thousands of animals.”

  Hilary flung herself back in her chair. “Peter. Do you want to see me stand up in Parliament and explain all that?”

  He did not.

  “Do you realize what a meal of it the Opposition will make?”

  He did.

  “I suppose the recommendation to appoint Parker came from the Gang of Six, among them my sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did she absent herself from the meeting at which Parker’s appointment was recommended? No! And why bloody not?” The hand came down hard on her desk. “He was her lover then!” The senator glared.

  Peter judged that silence was the best response.

  “You know as well as I do that Sonja finagled a job at the Research during that long streak of pessimism, back in 1984. She recommended Dr. Parker should be brought to Australia from America and appointed senior research scientist—and the minute he had an excuse, he resigned. He didn’t repay a cent of his establishment expenses! But abracadabra! He suddenly has hundreds of thousands of dollars for industrial research from a bunch of crooks in Thailand.”

  “Oh, Minister, Siam Enterprises is one of the most—”

  “Peter,” she said wearily, “I’ve had dinner at the house of the managing director of Siam Enterprises in Bangkok. The other guests were three generals and a heroin billionaire. We ate off gold plates.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to go. Bring my briefcase.”

  She took the file to read in the car, thinking that the other guest at that dinner in Bangkok had been a totally gorgeous young man, Michael something—a photographer.

  By the time she arrived at the television studio, Senator Olfson had discovered the correspondence from Diana Pembridge: year after year, this person had put her name forward for the Ethics Committee at the Research. There were copies of letters from the Australasian Ornithological Association, from headmasters of schools, from the National Parks and Wildlife Service, and from the radicals, Animal Action, all recommending Miss Pembridge as animal welfare representative on the committee.

  “Why don’t we like Diana Pembridge?” she asked Peter, who promised to find out.

  When she emerged from the lights of the studio, rouged and pancaked, her head high with victory, he had the answer.

  “She’s a radical, boss. Not a wet radical. Some members of Animal Liberation object to her because she kills rabbits and foxes.”

  “Thank you,” Hilary said. She settled herself into the velvety upholstery of her government limousine and turned to him with an affectionate smile. “I like people who kill rabbits,” she said. “When I described the rabbit fertility-control program in there, the audience cheered.”

  That afternoon, Diana got a phone call from a man who claimed to work for the minister for science. Did Diana own shares in any company that contracted work to the Research? he asked. Was she prepa
red to make a sworn statement to that effect? A few minutes later, her fax began jerking out a letter inviting her to accept appointment to the Ethics Committee at the Exotic Feral Species and Microbiology Research Centre.

  Hilary had spoken to Sonja by then. “Where’s John?” she said. “Your switchboard told my secretary that he was in South Australia, but they don’t know where to contact him there.”

  “He’s doing fieldwork,” Sonja replied.

  “Wish I could just go incommunicado,” Hilary said. “Leave my mobile phone under a rock somewhere. Well, too bad. This is an emergency. Sonja, you have to persuade John to step down from the Ethics Committee.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you,” Hilary said, “but my office has received complaints about the nature of his appointment. Nothing personal, merely—”

  “What?”

  “Sonja, please just do as I say. I’ll explain the situation to John at length when I see him. Meanwhile, darling, take my word for it. How are you, by the way?”

  “If John goes, there’ll be no animal representative on the committee,” Sonja blurted.

  “Yes there will. There’s a local girl who’s ideal. That’s my other phone ringing. Talk to you later.”

  For a few moments Sonja was too stunned to think. Her office in the administration building was on the senior executive floor, at the top, and from the window behind her desk she had a view of the lake. She swiveled her chair and stood, her gaze reaching across the white oyster bed of laboratory buildings, to the glossy black blisters on the roof of her own house and beyond that to the silvery water. Who has complained about John? she wondered. Somebody has betrayed us. Somebody has told Hilary about the chimps! And the “ideal local girl”: that could only be Diana Pembridge. Over my dead body, Sonja thought.

  Chapter Six

  Diana shook out the black dress and pulled it over her head. The neckline left her shoulders bare—“For me to bite you,” Raoul had said. She felt hot, remembering his teeth running across her skin. “Damn you, Jason,” she said, as she clipped on a pair of gold earrings—but he had been so helpful over the weekend, she felt obliged to humor him. For a shy man, Jason Nichols was strangely intrusive. “You shouldn’t wear red,” he had said one day. “I like you in cold colors.”